[csaa-forum] THIS FRIDAY: Media at Sydney, Legal and Social Chill: Influences on Collective Non-News Reporting, Judith Townend, May 29

[Cesar Albarran Torres]

Media at Sydney presents

Legal and Social Chill: Influences on Collective Non-News Reporting

Judith Townend (City University London)


This presentation investigates the legal and social factors influencing national and local editorial decision making in England and Wales, and those that inhibit reporting of news stories, in the context of a globalised and networked news environment.

Drawing on interviews with media law specialists and surveys among journalists and bloggers, Judith Townend suggests that lawyers play a pivotal role in the institutional, editorial gatekeeping process, enabling as well as restricting publication. Their absence from the editorial process has a paradoxically constraining and liberating effect: the lack of legal advice in poorly resourced newsrooms may lead to unnecessary censorship of particular stories, but at the same time bloggers without legal support and training may be less reactive to potential libel and privacy risks.

She also finds that non-legal factors can play an equally forceful role in the collective avoidance of stories. In this way, small bloggers steer clear of particular topics for fear of the social implications in local communities and national journalists neglect stories which would damage their access to sources or contradict the dominant narrative.

Date: Thursday 29th May, 2014
Time: 16:00-17:00
Location: S226 Seminar Room, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney, John Woolley Building (A20)<http://db.auth.usyd.edu.au/directories/map/building.stm?ref=d08h15> level 2, entry off Manning Road.
Register at http://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/legal-and-social-chill-influences-on-collective-non-reporting-tickets-11624841213


Judith Townend is a lecturer in journalism at City University London and will be visiting University of Technology, Sydney for two weeks as part of the Erasmus Mundus programme. Her doctoral research is based at City's Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism and she also works as a research associate on the AHRC-funded Media Plurality and Power project at University of Westminster.

Current project: http://mediaplurality.com
Twitter: @jtownend
Blog: http://meejalaw.com



Media at Sydney is presented by the
Department of Media and Communications<http://sydney.edu.au/arts/media_communications/>, University of Sydney



For more information contact
Dr Fiona Martin
T: 0428391122 or 02 90365098
E: fiona.martin at sydney.edu.au<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
M: 0428 391 122


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